廖, 扣, 裂, 愤, and 汤

Today we start with a pretty uncommon character, 廖 [liào], which is a surname and means nothing else. I don't think I've ever met a person with this surname, but there are more than a few instances of it in the history books.

扣 [kòu] is a rather more common character. 折扣 [zhékòu], meaning "discount" (i.e., in price), is something people always like to encounter when shopping. By itself, 扣 often means "to deduct," such as in the sentence "如果我迟到，会被扣薪水."

Our third character is 裂 [liè], which means "to split" or "to crack," both figuratively and literally. 分裂 [fēnliè] is a common word containing the character, meaning "to divide" or "to separate."

Our last character for the day is an easy one -- 汤 [tāng], which means "soup." Much like English, you can pretty much tack 汤 onto the back of a food and make a word meaning soup made from that food -- i.e., 鸡汤, 蘑菇汤, etc.